291–300 of 386 posts
Regardless of individual opinions on whether CEOs should be terminated for layoffs or not - there's a surprising amount of comments here that seem to not understand that growing companies don't hire for today, but for where they want to be tomorrow. Where you want to be tomorrow is based on where you and your investors believe the world is going. If the world materially changes enough to shift your expectations about…
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> On the face of it, it was obvious If it was obvious, then the market would have priced it in. But it didn't. So the crowdsourced collective wisdom was indeed that industries were leaping 5-10 years into the future overnight. That was the thing that was "obvious" to most people. You may have disagreed at the time, and if you'd shorted stocks you could have made some money. But the idea that "on the face of it, it wa…
A very famous investor once said: "When I see a market bubble forming I quickly rush towards it".
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And yet Steve Jobs transformed Apple from 90 days to bankruptcy to the biggest company in the world. Was he worth $200 million in compensation? Hell yeah. Because he is responsible for that wealth creation. This kind of turnaround also happened at Barnes & Noble, all due to one man - the CEO, James Daunt. https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barne... CEOs get paid a lot because they are crucial to t…
But even poorly performing CEOs get paid 100s of millions. Why?
Regardless of individual opinions on whether CEOs should be terminated for layoffs or not - there's a surprising amount of comments here that seem to not understand that growing companies don't hire for today, but for where they want to be tomorrow. Where you want to be tomorrow is based on where you and your investors believe the world is going. If the world materially changes enough to shift your expectations about…
It is a very odd discussion to have since, even when running a company well, no public company should be compensating its CEO to the tune of even 1 million a year. It is absolutely a ruling class leeching off society that this happens. It doesn't happen everywhere or even in america in the past, big companies can be run without this behavior. It isn't supply and demand, it is cronyism. Should a CEO be allowed to get…
I don't think termination of a CEO should be a kneejerk to layoffs in the tens of thousands, and neither is a failure to predict the future. However, if the CEO keeps getting raises when the profits don't see a likewise boost, there is a disconnect. Google is still seeing rising profits, just not skyrocketing. And while everyone is skittish about interest rates and potential recession, that's not a given - unless you layoff enough people.
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Now That would be a firing offense for a CEO. Most shareholders prioritize returns over headcount, otherwise they would be donating to charity instead of buying stock.
It's almost like just relying on the invisible hand of the market to create good results doesn't work. And to be clear: just because you're incentivized to harm people, doesn't exonerate you when you harm people. "I was just following incentives" isn't a defense.
How many tears do you shed when someone with a vast amount of wealth has to take a few months to find a new job?
I'm surprised that nobody links to the best proposed solution to this problem, so I will: https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/dumpceo.html The US could, if it was inclined, legalise prediction markets & investors could subsidise markets for stock price conditional on the CEO stepping down, thus revealing in the strongest possible wisdom-of-the-market sense whether the CEO is going a good job. This would solve the problem…
there would need heavy moderation in order to avoid nefarious things like contract killings
"What about the risk of insider trading by committing harmful / illegal acts? That is, could President Biden’s doctor decide to poison him, then make money when he has to resign due to ill health?
I think the strongest evidence against is that this basically never happens in stock markets. Tesla stock would plummet if Elon Musk died or resigned, but nobody realistically worries that Musk’s doctor will short Tesla and poison him. Lots of corporations’ stocks would sink to zero if you burned down their offices and factories, but nobody shorts them and then commits arson.
Probably this is because there are laws against doing harmful and illegal things, and people have decided that stock market gains aren’t worth breaking the law and getting punished. Since prediction markets have only a tiny fraction of the amount of money that stock markets do, probably people won’t consider it worthwhile to commit harmful actions to manipulate them either. If you were going to murder someone to profit off a market, who would you rather kill: a US politician (the PredictIt market on the presidential election has a volume of about $600,000)? Or a Fortune 500 CEO (whose companies might have market caps in the hundreds of billions)?"
Of course see also the rest of that FAQ, it's all great.
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I think that's a different question then if it's obvious. I don't really understand the obvious claim. If it was obvious to investors and executives then what? They knowingly spent money they knew was a waste?
It's not that complicated -- it was obvious to some people, and not obvious to others. Clearly then, the wrong people were in charge.
The only solution is to form a guild for software engineers. Control access to the guild through credentials and other means. Provide mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities through the guild. Allow the guild to negotiate rates and working conditions with the industry. If actors can do it, why can't we? If you want to level the playing field with tech CEOs, that's the way to do it.
As an analogy: socialism has many benefits. But the major downside is that it usually requires a roughly 6 hour daily commitment from every worker. I think that we subconsciously react to that loss of autonomy, and it comes out as projection. Like: taxes would be so high! We'd never be able to see a doctor! We'd be at risk of dictatorship! And various other distractions. When the truth is, most of us are so marginalized in the US that we can't see how our individual suffering might be alleviated if we focused on shared prosperity. So we make fun of any alternative.
I might suggest that a union could only fly if it transcended individual employers. So don't think Starbucks union, think service worker union. If one company does layoffs, the rest of the workers could pull the plug and all choose to move to another company for temporary reduced pay. Or by earning double income by participating in the union, workers would have enough capital to start a new company.
Anonymity would also be key. We should have the right to start and stop employment on our terms, picking up odd contracts here and there, without committing to any employer. The burden of managing that risk should fall on the union, not the individual.
We might also demand no distinction between remote and office work. Instead, we could work towards telepresence and delegating to robots, like with remote surgery. If that's possible, surely we can answer calls remotely.
A few links from searching for "union workers rights":
https://www.dol.gov/general/workcenter/unions-101
https://newsguild.org/union-member-rights-in-the-workplace/
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/olms/compliance-assistance/publ...
What else might be desirable in tech? Assuming that this will all be automated by the end of the decade, what other protections might be needed to safeguard our livelihoods? Even outside of unions, this should be forefront in our minds.
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> And then, let's change the system. How about ... get ready for a taboo word in hi-tech: unionized? at a certain size, a hi-tech company must face labour union? Before anyone suggests that Union protect low performer and penalized high performer, keep in mind that right now, at this moment, high performers are culled left and right in FAANG because their salary is too high. High performers also gravitated towards "c…
How will you define a "high-tech company?"
Just laying it out that hi-tech workers tend to be dismissive when it comes to Unionizing.